158                 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

L.  B. Pruner, Stanley Barton, A. S. Maxwell, John L. Stephens, L. C.
Turner, A. P. Hand, John Killion, The Crawford Company, William
Risher, John D. Walker, Simpson & Holler, William Baxter, Edward
Wilton, Mrs. M. A. Wilton, Carbon Mercantile Co., James Kerr, Brown
& Owens, The Brosius Co., Siner & Pell, James McIntyre & Son, Mrs.
Beeson & Son, Joseph Blower; A. F. Pell & Sons, Frank Durkin, Mrs.
Dawes.
    The physicians who have been located in the practice here from time
to time during the practically forty years of the history of the place are
enumerated from recollection: George W. Bence, F. A. Matson, W. H.
Vansant, B. F. Witty, Dr. Birch, Dr. Slocum, Dr. Gooden, F. C. Fergu-
son, B. F. Spelbring, M. A. Johnson, George M. Pell, F. C. Lewis, L. G.
Brock.
    The Methodists, Missionary Baptists and Catholics have houses of
worship here. The first M. E. church, built in 1873, was burned on the
2d or 3d day of February, 1889, and the second built four years later,
and dedicated on the 16th day of June, 1893. For both these houses
Stewart Webster donated the ground. This house was wholly destroyed
by the big fire of March 25, 1905. The present one was built in 1905-6
and dedicated on the 20th day of May of the latter year, services by Dr.
T.  J. Bassett, of Greencastle. The charter membership of the Carbon
M. E. church numbered just six—Mrs. Indiana Orme, Stewart Webster,
Samuel D. Buck, Oliver Carlisle, John Brooks, Daniel Clark.
    The Carbon Missionary Baptist church was built and dedicated in
the year 1881, contract price on construction $600. The dedicatory serv-
ices were conducted by Rev. J. W. Terry. This was originally organ-
ized at Pontiac with a charter membership of twenty-two, when services
were sometimes held at the schoolhouse prior to the, building of the
church. Of the Catholic church there are at hand no data from which
to write.
    A number of the fraternal organizations and societies are maintained
here, of which nominally all are reported to be in flourishing condition.
The Masons, Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias have good buildings
and halls of their own. Other lodges are the Red Men, Home Defenders,
Pythian Sisters, Rebekabs, Eastern Star, Pocahontas.
    Industrially, aside from the coal mines which have been operated
within the immediately surrounding territory, a heading factory was
conducted here for a number of years by the Sourwine Brothers, and, for
a time, a flouring mill, by the Tyler-Cowman Company, which, after
having been burned, was not rebuilt.
    There is here a clay plant of large proportions, equipped with up-to-
date machinery for the production of a variety of utilities, with the best
of raw material immediately at hand, which, however, for reasons not
well understood by the uninitiated, produces comparatively little.
    The most disastrous fire in the history of Clay county was that suf-
fered by the town of Carbon on the 25th day of March,1905 which was
caused by the falling of live sparks upon shingle roofs emitted from the
smokestack of a passing locomotive on the Big Four Railroad. The
estimated loss of property consumed was in round figures $85,000, a
heavy and damaging affliction to befall a town of this size. Many of
the business houses were swept away by the flames. Numerous damage
suits were filed against the railroad company to recover the losses sus-
tained, which were compromised at the January term of Clay Circuit